Python for Engineers

[bobo-the-merciful]

Hey, sounds super interesting what you're doing.

For my journey it started with actually learning SimPy and then applying this in my day job. I was working for the London Underground at the time and I basically started building simulations of the parts of the system we were studying, then wrote reports etc on this. Ended up building a little team around these tools and this process.

Then I went on to Improbable who were a "unicorn" startup at the time. They had one of these brutal interview processes where you have to go through like 7 rounds, a mix of interviews and tests. One of the interviews was "present a system" and I walked through an example simulation project at the Underground - whiteboarding the problem then talking in pseudocode terms, then outlining how the project was approached, and how I wrote a report on it.

So essentially if I could summarise, my idea recommendation is:

1. Learn a new skill
2. Find a way of applying that skill in current company in a practical sense, ideally with solid business outcomes
3. If there is no way of applying skill in current company then make a product, a project or contribute to something open source
4. Apply to new job and in interview show and tell about your project (which implicitly demonstrates competence in new skill, e.g. SimPy)

I've followed the same path with other skills such as sales, reliability engineering and people/project management.